Mary
Shelley was
the daughter of Mary Wollstonecraftand
William Godwin (to whom Frankenstein
was dedicated). Godwin's novel, Caleb
Williams was an important influence on the work.Frankenstein
is one of the best known of the gothic canon, famously written when the author
was only 19, after she had spent a summer at the Villa Diodati with
Shelley, Byronand Polidori.
Few people believed it could be her work and suspected it was really written
by Shelley.

Mary Shelley's
life was haunted with tragedy; her mother died only 11 days after her birth
and her own first child died 12 days after birth. The next year, 1816, as
Frankenstein was being written,
Mary's half-sister, Fanny, and Shelley's wife, Harriet,
both committed suicide. Mary then lost two other children and her husband.
In Frankenstein, Mary explores
some of these harrowing experiences of birth, death, guilt, and self-loathing.
The character of
the brilliant but selfish Victor Frankenstein,
who abandons his creation and is indirectly responsible for killing those
he loves, owes much to Mary's husband Percy
Bysshe Shelley. Shelley abandoned his first wife and two children
and was recklessly irresponsible with Mary and theirs, insisting they
move house only days after she had given birth (the baby died), and when the
children were sick (Clara died of dehydration on a wagon journey).
William, too, might have lived had Shelley not ignored his doctor's
advice.

It is interesting to note
that the servant girl who is wrongfully executed for murder in
Frankenstein is calledJustine,
like the sexually abused innocent in de Sade's novel. Both Lewisand Byron possessed copies of this novel and may have discussed
it at the Villa Diodati. Another curiosity is the use of the name William
for the monster's first victim. Mary's father and half brother were
both named William and so was her baby son. She herself would have
been called William had she been the boy child her parents were anticipating.

The experiments of Erasmus
Darwin, as discussed byShelley and Polidori, were also an influence onFrankenstein. Darwin
was said to havepreserved a piece of vermicelli
in a glass case, till by some extraordinary means it began to move with voluntary
motion.

Shelley
was acquainted with many writers, including Samuel
Taylor Coleridge whose poetry made a great impression on her, and
Thomas Lovell Beddoes. Washington
Irving, author
of The
Legend of Sleepy Hollow, was
a temporary romantic interest.